North America: Southern Southwest U.S. (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ismael Sánchez-Morales. Kayla Worthey. Guadalupe Sánchez.

El Fin del Mundo is a Clovis site with multiple activity areas located in the Sonoran Desert of Northwest Mexico. The site contains the only gomphothere (Cuvieronius sp.)-Clovis association yet known in North America and has produced one of the largest assemblages of diagnostic Clovis stone tools south of the US-Mexico border. Zooarchaeological and taphonomic analyses indicate that Locality 1 preserves the remains of two gomphotheres, aged to approximately 2 years and 8-19 years old, and that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Summer Peltzer. Kaley Kelly. Ryan Arp. Christopher Schwartz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To date, much of the archaeological research in the Phoenix Basin has focused on the central Phoenix area, and specifically the areas surrounding Canal Systems 1 and 2. Recent cultural resource management testing and excavation projects in the west Phoenix area have provided new insights into Hohokam daily life at the confluence of the Salt and Gila...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Wright. John Jones. Todd Bostwick. Arleyn Simon.

Hohokam communities who resided alongside the perennial rivers in south-central Arizona are renowned for the massive canals they engineered and operated, representing some of the largest preindustrial irrigation systems in the world. In light of such achievement, dry farming technologies and practices remain a lesser known component of the Hohokam agricultural landscape. This paper takes a close look at recent fieldwork around the South Mountains, an upland setting at the confluence of the Salt...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Curran.

This is an abstract from the "Defining Perishables: The How, What, and Why of Perishables and Their Importance in Understanding the Past" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study provides an innovative multidisciplinary model operationalizing the study of perishable weaponry through experimental archaeology. In this model, I focus on war clubs, a type of Indigenous weapon commonly found across North America. Most of these weapons were made wholly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jasmine Kidwell. Julie Hoggarth.

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Human Population Dynamics, Innovation, and Ecosystem Change" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The vast region of far west Texas remains understudied in terms of its cultural, climatic, and environmental past. Current paleoclimatological and environmental proxy data sets are few and inconsistent in time, resolution, and scope. Here, we summarize key proxy data while contextualizing human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Boyd.

This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico are home to one of the most sophisticated and compositionally intricate rock art traditions in the world—the Pecos River style. This style is characterized by finely executed, polychromatic figures woven together to form mythic narratives. Artists depicted and vivified the actors in these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Huckleberry.

This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Of Julie Stein’s many contributions to geoarchaeology, her publications regarding sedimentology and stratigraphy with respect to site formation have been particularly influential. By employing earth science methods to elucidate the history of archaeological sediments in a diversity of environments and cultural settings, her work...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Uzzle. Karen Schollmeyer.

During the 2016-2017 Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology Field School, test excavations focused on the Gila River Farm Site [LA39315], located near Cliff, New Mexico. These excavations allow us to gain new insights into the Cliff phase (AD 1300-1450) in the upper Gila region. Despite evidence of looting and other disturbance, artifacts and data recovered here allow us to better understand several aspects of the Salado occupation of the site, including architectural styles, room function,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Nicolay.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over two dozen cave shrines are known from the Mimbres Mogollon region, more than have been reported from any other cultural region in the United States Southwest and Northwest Mexico (SW/NW). Despite some variation, the archaeological record of these sites is remarkably consistent and readily allows for their identification as shrines...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Slocum.

This is an abstract from the "Historical Archaeologies of the American Southwest, 1800 to Today" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper investigates the development of the Fort Huachuca Cemetery, an active burial ground first established in the late-nineteenth century on a military post in southern Arizona. The cemetery is known as a final resting place for a unique combination of individuals including Apache Scouts, Buffalo Soldiers, other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzan Granados.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper provides evidence of the presence of maize in southeastern New Mexico radiocarbon dated to 1,000 years prior to any in a dataset of 30 known southeastern New Mexico “Old Maize” sites. The oldest maize site is Keystone Dam radiocarbon dated to 3540 cal BP. Site LA 112766 radiocarbon dates to 4825–4575 BP. An investigation of the macrobotanical,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Caseldine.

The Hohokam within the lower Salt River Valley, central Arizona, practiced large-scale irrigation the spanned thousands of acres. Previous studies examining Hohokam irrigation assumed that there was a direct correlation between the amount of available water within the lower Salt River and the amount of land that could be irrigated. The amount of available water is necessary for assessing where water was sufficient for successful crops and where insufficient water made agricultural production...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Pool.

Obsidian Hydration and conventional radiocarbon dates at the HO-Bar Site range from 900 B.C. to A.D. 750, partially overlapping dates from nearby Mogollon Village. Perhaps more importantly, these dates are comparable to the Early Agricultural and Early Pithouse Period sites from Southwestern New Mexico. An Early Agricultural occupation has not been established in the Upland Mogollon area in the middle Mimbres River and San Francisco Rivers. The HO-Bar Site dates suggest that there is a Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haley Dougherty.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The UNLV Shivwits Research Project has excavated at numerous Virgin Branch habitation sites since its inception more than fifteen years ago. Sand-tempered ceramics recovered from these projects, which represent the first large-scale investigations conducted in the area, exhibit a high degree of variability in terms of their mineralogy and paste color. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtney McConnan Borstad. Adrianne Offenbecker. M. Anne Katzenberg.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis of prehistoric human remains has complemented other dietary reconstruction techniques for many years. It provides biologically-based data that allow an examination of what was actually consumed. Using 70 individuals from Paquimé and 14 from the nearby Convento site, we examine whether bone collagen δ13C and δ15N values are correlated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Krug. Kyle Waller. Christine VanPool.

Excavations have uncovered millions of marine shells throughout the Southwest. However, it was not an easily obtainable resource. The nearest possible location was the expansive shorelines of Sonora, Mexico. Archaeological literature is full of hypotheses regarding shell procurement and exchange—models of down-the-line trading, least cost, prestige, and group membership. Each of these hypotheses agrees that where and whom the people of the Southwest interacted with to acquire marine shell are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Schmader.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Warfare and conflict are almost always described in terms of male-centered actions. But it is clear in many cases, such as those during the Contact period in the Western Hemisphere, that conflict often involved entire communities thrown into struggles for their freedom and survival. This was quite evident during the first explorations of the American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Micah Smith. Tim Gibbs. Tim Roberts.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The La Junta de los Ríos (or La Junta) region of West Texas and Northeast Chihuahua is composed of villages scattered around the confluence of the Rio Conchos and Rio Grande. Based on limited investigations, La Junta village sites (AD 1200-1684) appear to be archeologically similar to, yet distinct from, adjacent Mogollon groups. While the region has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Baxter. Steve Nash. Michele Koons. Deborah Huntley. Octavius Seotewa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Toriette Lakes Great Kiva near Reserve, New Mexico was the subject of a 2018 field project under the auspices of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. This high altitude, threatened site appeared to be a shallow, disturbed, somewhat isolated, square great kiva of unknown date. Survey, excavation, and remote sensing have refined this interpretation. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Mabry.

This is an abstract from the "13,000 Years of Adaptation in the Sonoran Desert at La Playa, Sonora" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origins of village lifeways foundational to more complex precontact societies in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States can be traced back to the independent development of irrigation and associated social changes in early irrigation communities at La Playa and sites in the Sonoran Desert during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bridget M. Zavala. Gerardo Aldair Garcia Ortega.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results paleoethnobotanical and architectural analyses at two prehispanic sites in northern Durango, Mexico. The sites, Corral de Piedra (PAS017) and Los Berros (PAS023), were recently excavated as part of the Proyecto Arqueológico Sextín" which seeks to build a "deep chronology" in the Sextín valley located at the frontier between the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Franklin. Lauren Franklin. Brian McKee. Andrew Lack. Mitchell Keur.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We summarize research findings from a data recovery project conducted along US Highway 60 near Superior, Arizona for the Arizona Department of Transportation. Prehistoric sites here range from small habitation sites (farmsteads and/or hamlets) of the late Preclassic – early Classic (AD 1000 - 1160) to both small and large habitation sites of the late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only RJ Sliva.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cienega phase (800 BC-AD 50) of the Early Agricultural period in southern Arizona is marked by an abrupt shift in projectile point technology from the large, heavy, side-notched San Pedro dart points of the preceding San Pedro phase (1200-800 BC) to significantly smaller, deeply corner-notched Cienega points. Investigations over the past two decades at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Schwartz. Andrew Somerville.

The prehispanic settlement of Paquimé (ca. 1200-1450 CE) lay at the intersection of traditionally-defined "Mesoamerican" and "U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico" (SW/NW) macro-regions in northern Chihuahua, Mexico. Extensive evidence of exchange with distant communities exists at the site, including remains of over 300 scarlet macaws; brilliantly plumed birds whose natural habitat is located at least 1000 km southeast in the humid lowlands of Mexico. Archaeological and historical records...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaron Davidson.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Trade and Exchange" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research addresses how interregional interaction changed between the Viejo period (AD 700–1200) and Medio period (AD 1200–1450) in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico. Nonlocally procured or created artifacts, features, and iconographic elements are used as proxy evidence for past long-distance relationships. Data available in technical reports and...